


still I follow heartlines on your hand (this fantasy, this fallacy, this tumbling stone, echoes of a city that's long overgrown. your heart is the only place that I call home)

by What_Is_A_Mild_Opinion



Series: Golden Cracks and Miracles (This Bittersweet Being is Enough, With You) [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: I gave myself feels with a comparison of emotional trauma to infection, I'm a sucker for linguistic worldbuilding, No beta we die like Sleep-Deprived College Kids, Oh wait they're all just showing her, She would die before admitting this to Katara, Someone give these cHILDREN a bREAK!, Someone tell Toph that neglect isn't love, The Gaang is a Hot Mess, The Gaang is amazing, The Gaang just needs a hug, The Gaang loves Toph So Much, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, This is still shocking to her for some reason, Toph and Katara are best friends, Toph just loves her friends ok?, Toph listens to heartbeats as a coping mechanism, Toph loves Katara So Much, War sucks, What Have I DONE?!, for real though war stinks, heartbeats!!!, toph centric, we really do love them though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:48:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27010786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/What_Is_A_Mild_Opinion/pseuds/What_Is_A_Mild_Opinion
Summary: She laughs with her friends, and makes fun of Zuko, and then punches his arm to show she doesn’t mean any harm. Katara tells her she has to take a bath soon, and Toph tells her 'I’ll take a bath when I want', and Katara’s voice gets more serious and she says, 'I’d never let you drown, Toph, if that’s what you’re worried about'.The plates under Toph’s skin rub and shudder and push. Aang makes a joke, and Zuko stifles a laugh, and Sokka throws a handful of dirt at her, and she lets herself sink into the vibrations shuddering through her bones of five human heartbeats and two that are not human. She thinks of silences, and empty rooms, and distance, and she wonders how she let these people in, how she let them get so close. She wonders why she doesn’t ever want them to leave.---Toph tracks the heartbeats of her friends (her family), and finds that home is not a place, but a group of people.
Relationships: Toph & Katara, Toph & Zuko & Suki & Sokka & Aang, Toph & the Gaang
Series: Golden Cracks and Miracles (This Bittersweet Being is Enough, With You) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1944868
Comments: 22
Kudos: 113





	1. Heartbeats Twisting Fast (This Reckless Pulse Is The Soundtrack Of Home)

**Author's Note:**

> Guess what time it is? Toph time! I love this tiny violent child, and I love, love, love the idea of her keeping track of her friends by following their heartbeats. Toph is a mess, but we love her anyway. (They're all messes, but we love them all anyway.) This fic does have discussions of children killing people, along with the burdens and unfairness of war, and a fight scene that involves death. It isn't super graphic, I don't think, but if that bothers you you can either skip that section or skip this fic! It's not like I'm gonna know! A lot of this fic includes Toph comparing the love her parents gave her to the love her friends give her, and realizing that how her parents loved her was wrong and harmful, so it does discuss bad parenting, and borderline neglect. If that bothers you or is a triggering subject, you probably shouldn't read this. Go forth, and be safe, peoples! This fic is not as fluffy as I thought it would be, but I'm am still pretty happy with how it turned out. Enjoy our children being a dysfunctional family! (And please, for your own sake, reference the language key. As always, All Hail the Language Key.)

The group was stretched out by the fire, laughing, when she realized something was wrong. Toph tipped her head up, and listened to the thrum of the vibrations that reverberate in her bones, and she sensed, rather than noticed, that someone was missing. “Where’s Sparky?” she said, trying to appear as if she didn’t really care. “I didn’t notice him creeping off.”

Katara’s head shifted, and she rose partially from her seat, looking around. Toph could feel the frown in her words when she said, “Hmmm. I don’t know.” Her heart rate shifted ever so slightly, and so did the rest of the group’s. “Did anyone see him leave?” Katara asked.

“Not me!” Toph said cheerfully. 

From across the fire, she saw Aang snort into his cup, slurping down some water wrong and entering a fit of heavy coughing. Sokka pounded on his back until he stopped choking. He twisted his head towards the older boy and said, “Thank you, Sokka. That furious back-smacking  _ was  _ what I needed as I was actively dying,” in a voice dripping with sarcasm.

Ahhh, Sassy Aang. His appearances were few and far between, but dammit it Toph didn’t love them.

Toph felt another spike in a very familiar heartbeat and groaned. “If you’re so worried, Sugar Queen, just go look for him.”

She was pretty sure Katara’s frown was deepening. “I’m not worried,” she protested.

Aha. Frown detected.

Toph rolled her eyes. “Really, Katara? You want to argue this with  _ me? _ ” Katara didn’t respond, so Toph leaned over to where Suki’s heartbeat felt like a bass drum instead of a snare. “Suki,” she said, “How big is the Frown of Scolding?”

Suki leaned over and brushed her fingers along the top of Toph’s hand. “Right now it’s the Frown of Moderate Agitation, but if you keep pushing, I think we could get to the Frown of Significant Agitation within the next three minutes.”

Katara groaned and shot to her feet. “That’s it,” she declared, throwing her hands into the air. “I’m going to look for Zuko, if only to get away from you  _ qanikejes _ .” She stormed away, grumbling under her breath in her native tongue.

Toph bit down a triumphant grin. Katara was so easy. So easy to rile up. So easy to get to relax in a way she didn’t even notice. 

Toph had begun putting the dots together when she realized the heart of why she and the older girl had started butting heads in the first place. Toph was so used to being ignored, to silent, distant love, that someone caring so openly had made her feel exposed in a bad way. Katara loved with her heart on her sleeve, and Toph loved with silences, and empty rooms, and distance. Katara had figured this out, and Toph had figured Katara out, and the two of them had formed a delicate balance, a distance that was far enough for Toph and close enough for Katara, and then… and then Katara had slipped right past her walls without even knowing it. She had become something that Toph didn’t have a good word for, because Toph loved with silences, and empty rooms, and distance, and Katara loved with warmth, and loud, brazen affection. It was different. And Toph didn’t have a word yet for the way Katara had coiled into her cracks. It was so different. But… she didn’t really hate it all that much anymore.

Katara loved with her heart on her sleeve, and the war had coiled into her cracks much differently than it had sunk into Toph’s. 

This is what Toph knew of the Southern Water Tribe. It was small, and slowly inching its way into the sea; ruined by a war it didn’t start. This is what she knows of Katara. She holds the pendant on her blue necklace like she is afraid it will not be there the next time, and when she doesn’t know where Sokka is, her heartbeat thumps erratically and her fingers twitch toward her water pouch. 

This is what she knows. Katara’s mother died in a Fire Nation raid. (This is what she knows. Katara blames herself.) 

(She knows it isn’t Katara’s fault. She thinks Katara knows that, logically. She thinks she also probably doesn’t care.) 

This is what she knows. Katara’s mother died when Katara was not there. Katara tracks them, keeps track of them like they will die if she doesn’t. Toph is not naive. This is war, and no one can control all the variables, but dammit if the older girl wasn’t going to try. 

Secretly, this makes Toph feel safer. Katara fights harder than anyone she has ever met when someone she cares about is in danger, and somehow, somehow, Toph ended up on this list of people Katara would die for. It only makes her feel like she is staring out into nothing and everything all at once some days.

So this is the game she plays, when Katara’s pulse spikes in combination with the lack of a familiar pulse through the soles of her feet. She riles her up, and calls her Sugar Queen, and makes her frown and scowl and snap until her heart rate is back to normal. She pushes her into frustration instead of concern, because concern clouds Katara’s mind, but anger sharpens it, hones all her edges razor sharp and deadly and terrifyingly smart. And when Katara is thinking smart, she knows the rest of them better than she knows herself. If anyone could find Zuko when Toph couldn’t feel him, it was Katara.

Toph allowed herself to bask in the victory of pushing Katara’s buttons exactly as she intended. Then something struck her. She leaned over to Sokka and said, “What’s a  _ qanikejes _ ?”

Sokka snorted and twisted towards her, brushing his fingers over her hand. “It means pest,” he said, his voice grinning. “But don’t worry. She calls me that all the time, too.”

_ She calls me that all the time, too _ . Toph’s empty rooms hissed, filling with wind and noise and a warmth becoming more and more familiar to her.  _ Katara talks to me like she talks to her brother.  _ Toph loved with silences and empty rooms and distance. But she was starting to wonder if maybe noise wasn’t so bad after all.

They sat around the fire, and ate dinner. Aang almost choked on his own water three more times. Suki teased Sokka, and Sokka flirted back. Toph turned her head towards Aang and made a gagging gesture. He started laughing so hard she could feel the shaking of his shoulders through the earth. 

She feels the exact moment when Zuko and Katara come back into range. She feels it through the soles of her feet, a faint pulse of mismatched heartbeats, measured footsteps and a ripple that means Katara is laughing. It reverberates through her bones, and she lets out a slow breath. Her shoulders relaxed, and she felt her heart beat slow just a bit. When had she gotten tense? Why were the two more heartbeats rippling through the singing earth enough to relax her?

Katara and Zuko got back, and sure enough, Katara was still laughing. Aang had said once that Katara laughed like she would never get to again. Toph found that assessment accurate. 

“Hey, Sparky,” she said loudly. “We wondered where you had scampered off to.”

Zuko only hesitated for a second before dropping down next to her and tapping her hand. “Is there any food left, or did you gluttons eat it all?” he asked.

Sokka made a haughty scoff, and said, “I’ll have you know, sir, that I am a growing warrior, and warriors need lots of food to sustain their excellent condition. The more food they eat, the better a fighter they are.” He turned his face towards the place Suki’s heartbeat rippled out from. “Which is why Suki eats like twice as much as I do.”

Aang let out an,  _ Awww, that’s so sweet.  _

Katara laughed. “Go ahead and call yourself out like that, Sokka.”

Toph groaned. “Could you two not be disgustingly sweet for like, five minutes? For the sake of settling my nausea?”

Suki laughed and leaned towards Sokka. “That earned you a kiss, O’ Growing Warrior.”

Aang laughed. “Apparently that’s a no, Toph.”

Toph sighed. “Worth a shot.” She caught an unusual vibration, like stifled disgust. “You okay over there, Sparky?”

Zuko cut in, his voice aggravated. “I just wanted some food, not a front row seat to the Sokka-and-Suki-Swap-Tongues show! Can I please get some  _ food _ ?”

Everyone but Zuko dissolved into laughter. Even Appa and Momo seemed to be enjoying the show. 

Katara found the pot full of jambalaya, which Sokka had tried to unsuccessfully hide behind his back when Zuko asked for food. 

(This was a running joke now, in their little group. It had started when an annoyed Toph hid the breakfast food from Sokka one morning in revenge for a well aimed dirt throw the day before that got a worm in her bra. It had snowballed. 

Aang hid the stew from Zuko when he was annoyed. Zuko hid the sandwiches from Suki after she left him with a rather embarrassing bruise. Suki hid the meat pie from Katara, and Katara hid the guavas from Sokka, and soon they stopped hiding food because they were annoyed at the others, but because it had morphed into an inside joke. 

So now, when any opportunity presented itself, they stole food. The result was that any one of them would ask for something and find it mysteriously gone at least once a meal. More than once, two people in their group had ended up in a silent, hurried tussle over a dish, because both of them had gone to hide it at the same time.

It made something in Toph’s chest shift and scrape, fault lines and tectonic plates rubbing and eroding, inch by inch pushing rock further away from the ground. This was new. Inside jokes, and group laughter, and the ever-present noise that hums in her bones as they love with tiny grins,and fierce hugs, and small continuations of a warm memory. It is new, and it is different, and the plates of earth under her skin are contorting, inch by inch. She wonders what she will look like when they stop. What mountains will lie just under her skin. She laughs with her friends, and yanks on a salad bowl with Suki on the other end, and she thinks they will be full of singing.)

Zuko gets his food, and when he asks for the bread, it is mysteriously gone. (Aang had it.) 

She laughs with her friends, and makes fun of Zuko, and then punches his arm to show she doesn’t mean any harm. Katara tells her she has to take a bath soon, and Toph tells her  _ I’ll take a bath when I want,  _ and Katara’s voice gets more serious and she says,  _ I’d never let you drown, Toph, if that’s what you’re worried about.  _

The plates under Toph’s skin rub and shudder and push. Aang makes a joke, and Zuko stifles a laugh, and Sokka throws a handful of dirt at her, and she lets herself sink into the vibrations shuddering through her bones of five human heartbeats and two that are not human. She thinks of silences, and empty rooms, and distance, and she wonders how she let these people in, how she let them get so close. She wonders why she doesn’t ever want them to leave.

\----

Somehow, a patrol found them. Which really would have been fine, if they had all been awake at the time. 

Toph woke up to yells and whooshes and an oppressive heat that felt far too close for comfort. Somewhere, Appa was roaring, his footfalls shaking the earth with his fury. Katara was already awake, tripping and snarling and using words in her native tongue Toph was pretty sure were not complimentary. Air rushed over her skin as Katara dove for the tent opening, the familiar  _ thwap  _ of her waterskin against her hip. Toph bolted upright, throwing off her blanket and dropping her feet flat on the ground. Immediately, the world came into focus. She almost wished it hadn’t. 

Surrounding their campsite was an earthquake of footfalls and heartbeats and the familiar pulse in veins that she had come to associate with firebending. In the middle of the fray, slashing and dipping and weaving, was Sokka. A Fire Nation patrol. 

Toph let out a few choice curse words, and slammed her foot on the ground. A warning tremor shook the earth. She felt five familiar heartbeats  _ skip-bump  _ in time with the shudder. If you didn’t know what it felt like, you never would have noticed it. Her friends noticed it. She felt their bodies move nearly as one, ducking and dodging and dropping into a squat on flexed toes, placing their hands flat against the earth. Toph grinned, and smashed both hands against the ground. 

The earth distorted, swinging and soaring up and down in five foot waves of dirt and dust for at least fifteen seconds. The patrol members screamed, staggering and tripping. She felt some of their limbs curl inwards with sudden lack of matter, and when agonized screams joined their startled counterparts, she knew some firebending blasts had gone awry. 

This particular move was one they had practiced in drills for if their camp was attacked. Sokka had come up with the idea. He had pulled it directly from a method of the Southern Water Tribe. 

When you were on a boat, and a wave tipped it heavily in one direction, you could lean back with the wave if you had room to fall, or you could lean into it to stay steady if you didn’t. 

“What does this have to do with drills?” Zuko had asked when he said it.

“Well, I was thinking,” Sokka said, “Katara and I teach you how to wave ride, and then,” he grinned, twisting towards Toph and Aang, “ _ earth waves. _ ”

The idea had stopped them all dead, and they had all immediately started adding it to their drills. To no one's shock, Sokka and Katara were the best at staying steady during it, and were the fastest to recover from vertigo. 

(Actually, Katara had said that they didn’t recover any faster at all, but had mastered the art of counteracting the vertigo with their own movements. Toph refused to admit that this was freakishly impressive.) 

But the rest of them were getting better at it, and it was a very effective move for disarming your enemies. So they practiced it every drill session, and now it was paying off.

(Toph thought there was a certain cruelty in the fact that six children had to practice what to do if people they didn’t know tried to kill them as they slept. She has learned that war is cruel, and death waits for no one, but it still sends flames of fury screaming down her spine when they do weekly drills. They are practicing how to not get killed. They are planning how to kill their killers first. Toph wanted an adventure. But this feels like punishment for sins that aren’t their own. A part of her is bitter. Why is this war theirs to fix? She doesn’t know. She never will. She practices drills, and prays they won’t ever be necessary.)

Her friends tilt and lean and ride out the fiercely rolling earth with carefully controlled movements. A fierce surge of pride filled her. Her friends were kind of awesome. 

Toph counts to fifteen, and lets the earth fall back to its normal state. Sokka and Katara are back on their feet, fighting, in barely three seconds. Sokka is swinging the thrum that his space sword is in her vision, and Toph feels the earth in the bed of the nearby lake lighten, and there is the crashing, rushing sound of thousands of gallons of water swirling into the air all at once by sheer force of will. Not that Toph would ever admit it, but Katara is kind of terrifying in real fights, and Toph is very glad that the older girl is not her enemy. 

A few seconds later, the others begin to stagger to their feet and wreak the kind of havoc that only a tightly-knit group of impressive fighters like their group could. 

Say what you will about Toph, but mostly, what comes off as arrogance on her part is just practicality. She sees the earth in a way that no one else can, bends it in a way no one else could think to, so she is the best earthbender in the world. 

Of course she is awesome, too, but this is just logic. 

She is the best earthbender in the world, and she is part of a talented, terrifying group of what is probably some of the best fighters in the world. They wouldn’t have gotten this far if they weren’t. 

Toph dives headfirst into the fight. Normally, in nighttime fights she would have an advantage, because the darkness doesn’t impede her vision. Hell, the darkness is the  _ cause _ of her vision. But she can feel so much heat coming from all around, and there are so many firebenders in this fight, that vision probably isn’t a huge barrier for the others, because apparently fire is a source of light. 

(She doesn’t know what fire looks like. She doesn’t know what  _ light  _ looks like. But apparently it’s a big deal, because Katara has tripped over her too many times at night without a fire going for light to not be a big part of making out your surroundings if you don’t have earthbending vision. She factors this into fights. Right now, with all this fire, they can probably see fine, so the scales are about even in terms of sight.)

She smashes an attacker under a boulder. There is a crunch, and a scream, choked and gurgling. Toph’s next step carries her into a pool of hot, sticky liquid. It is telling that she knows it is blood, not from educated guesswork, but from experience. Something curdles, cold and consuming in her gut. 

An icy-hot feeling races through her veins, damning in its familiarity. Toph has killed people. She knows she has. Scraped knees, and broken bones, and bruises that left her crying when someone brushed them on accident, earned in the chaos of the Earth Rumble, have taught her the limits of the human body. She knows them. She has crossed them more than once. More than she can count on all her fingers and toes. 

_ It was necessary,  _ she tells herself, and there is a strange pain in the fact that it isn’t a lie.  _ I was protecting myself. I was saving my friends. I am saving my family. If the roles were reversed, they would not hesitate either.  _

She doesn’t regret it. Maybe that makes her a monster, but it was worth it every time, to protect herself and the people she knows she could no longer live without. She regrets that she had to make the choice, regrets that the world is so twisted and ruined that a twelve-year-old has to be a killer, but she does not regret the deeds themselves. 

Suki told her a saying, once, old and heavy with meaning.  _ Ue gethahew ne kow jinawel undue peones, neu kow jinawel yen ues amoren tekahanes.  _ I fight not for the blood on my hands, but for the blood in the veins of my loved hearts. 

It resonated within Toph, in a way that made her think Suki knew the heaviness that curled in her gut, knew why she lay awake at night, staring into nothingness and trying to forget the sound of snapping spines, trying to stop the shaking in her hands. Toph hadn’t forgotten the saying. It had become her fuel, her fire, her iron shield that she braced against when the guilt came knocking. When the heaviness coils stinging in her gut, and the grief for people she didn’t know vies for control, she drops her feet to the ground and listens to the sound of the heartbeats of the five people in the world that love her exactly as she is, listens to the pulse that means there is still blood in their veins, and she does not regret. Grieves, yes. But does not regret.

Toph spun around, swinging her arm out, and spikes of rock punched three firebenders into their companions. One made the mistake of roaring and leaping for her, bared fists and no fire, grief in his voice. A stab of cold pierced her abdomen as she realized the man she killed must have been something to him; a friend, a brother, a lover.  _ No regret.  _ She twisted, ducking under his lunge and punching him in the jaw so hard he went out cold. 

A glow of pride rippled through her, and she could almost hear Suki and Sokka cheering her on. She just took him out, no earthbending at all. She would have to remember to tell Katara thank you for suggesting they all do hand-to-hand combat practice. 

She dove back into the fight.

The patrol was full of talented warriors. Not talented enough. Not enough to overcome their small group’s vicious ferocity, their extensive experience, their relentless training and fighting and virtually unrivaled expertise in fighting styles, both with bending and without. 

Throughout the fight, she sees glimpses of her friends through the singing earth. Katara and Zuko are back to back, fighting off hordes of assailants with a coordinated grace that would put most master martial artists to shame. Suki and Sokka are in the thick of the fray, slashing and slicing and never holding back, not even for a second. Mercy is not a term in their fighting repertoire, and they do not shy away from what Toph knows are killing blows, the razor-sharp edges of Suki’s fans and Sokka’s sword biting into flesh almost hungrily. She catches the fewest glimpses of Aang, cloaked as he is in the security of weightlessness, but from the flashes she is privy to, he is just shooting through the crowd, causing havoc and forcing them to aim at each other in an attempt to get him. She doesn’t fight like Aang, will never fight like Aang, but she has to admit there is a fast-paced fury to it that makes him perhaps even more effective than she is. 

All told, it takes them about seven minutes to stop the fifty-something attackers that ambushed their camp. The sleep must have been making them sloppy.

Toph punched a man in the face with a rock, and whipped around, looking for a new contestant, only to find no one there. A quick scan of the campsite, that was really now more of a battlefield, showed that the only ones left standing were her friends. She zeroed in on their heartbeats, scanning their bodies for major injuries. The biggest wound on all of them was a burn that would probably be about as big as her outstretched hand, located on the outside of Sokka’s right forearm. The rest of them had scrapes and bruises, minor burns and assorted injuries, but nothing life threatening. She breathed a sigh of relief, and let most of the tension ebb from her shoulders and spine.

Still high on adrenaline, she walked on shaking legs towards what used to be the firepit. Now it was just a basin full of lakewater and blood. One by one, they regrouped in the center of camp. 

Katara and Aang joined them last, having gone around and put out the fires with well aimed strikes of lake water. Katara reached out with trembling hands, and pushed them forward and up in one smooth arc. Toph felt something disconnect from the earth, and then splash into the firepit-blood-basin. Katara sat down hard, and the others followed suit. 

Toph tried to sit down with her legs curled under her, but ended up in more of a gargoyle crouch for her other wish. She kept both feet flat against the ground, scanning, watching, waiting for something else to come at them, waiting for some bigger threat to make itself known. Nothing came. Screams and moans and voices yelling foul curses filled the air. Aang and Katara had trapped soldiers in shackles of ice and earth, and then left them there. They were making themselves known. One voice rose above the din, shrill and furious. 

“ _ Blodfrewj, _ ” she screamed, guttural and scraping. “Traitor, betrayer, oath-breaker! You will all fall under the Fire Lord. You think you can beat him? Ha! You cannot even find a safe hiding place. He will roast you alive. You are  _ nothing  _ compared to him. Do you hear me, you spineless cowards? You dirt-crawlers? Do you hear me,  _ blodfrewj?  _ Everything you have given up will be for  _ nothing _ . They will die in front of you, slow, and painful, with all the humiliation they deserve, the inferior wretches. They will  _ bu- _ ” 

Her passionate speech was abruptly cut off by a gargling noise. Katara rose to her feet, and stormed in the direction of the woman. Toph didn’t know what Katara did, exactly, but the screaming stopped. 

Zuko’s spine was ramrod straight, and his heartbeat was pounding, a furious pulse dripping terror. Toph knew what  _ blodfrewj  _ meant. She knew what it meant for Zuko. She knew what it meant for the rest of them, if they were caught. She refused to acknowledge the terror pooling in her stomach.

Katara stormed back in, her pulse a furious drumbeat that shook Toph’s bones with the rage in her stiff movements.

“Well, you shut her up awfully fast,” Suki said, a bit too loudly for just their little group. “What did you do?”  
Katara let out a laugh that sent claws of ice scrabbling down Toph’s spine, frigid and unforgiving. “Did you know,” she responded with a frosty cheer, words too loud to just be addressing them, “That it actually isn’t too hard to freeze water after it’s been shoved down someone’s throat? It just freezes, right there in the esophagus, and you just have to wait for it to melt?”

The trapped soldiers closest to them fell silent immediately, their heartbeats skyrocketing. Katara brushed off her skirt and sat down, still speaking loud enough for them to hear every word. “It doesn’t kill you, of course, because you can still breathe through your nose, but imagine having a very long piece of ice rattling around in your windpipe while your body slowly exerts more and more heat in an attempt to melt it.” She shook her head, but a hint of vicious satisfaction had crept into her words. “ _ Not  _ pleasant, I would think.”

The soldiers fell completely silent, except for a few of the braver ones leaning over to ones farther away to furiously tell them to  _ Shut your sorry mouths before the water-fox does it for you!  _

Sokka’s spine stiffened at the hushed slur, and the steely scrape of his sword being drawn did not go unnoticed. They hastily switched to saying  _ waterbender.  _

Toph wasn’t sure how long they sat there, breathing heavily and waiting for something more, because there was always something more. Nothing more came. 

It was a patrol. Yes, it was a big one, but who knows how long their route had been? No one would notice they were missing for hours, and maybe not even for days. 

They all seemed to come to this revelation one after the other. Toph marked when it happened for each of them, the moment their spines relaxed, and their breathing slowed, and their heartbeats returned to some semblance of normality. First herself, then Aang and Katara in near synchrony, Suki, and finally, Sokka. Zuko never relaxed. Toph knew why. ( _ Blodfrewj  _ was still echoing in her ears, with all its horrible implications.)

The silence pervaded. The six of them sat in a loose circle, Momo curled around Sokka’s neck, Appa hovering so close to Aang his clothes shifted with each of the bison’s massive breaths. Toph kept her feet flat against the ground. 

Part of her told herself she was doing it to watch for trouble. The part of her that was real, the part of her that she had hidden away so it never had the chance to become a liar, knew that she was doing something else. She closed her unseeing eyes, and let the earth sing under her feet, and she listened to the heartbeats of five people and two creatures. 

She let herself sink into the comfort of the pulses she somehow already knew better than the darkness she had always lived in. Anchored herself in the steady  _ thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump _ , from five different places, overlapping and bleeding together in a twisting collage of noise. She buried herself in it, turning the beats over in her head, wrapping her mind in the steady metronome so the demons screaming in the back of her head would just shut up already, because  _ They’re fine, we’re fine, there’s no more fighting right now.  _

A voice in her head that sounds like Katara, bitter and exhausted, whispers,  _ Are we fine, though? Are we ever really fine? Is  _ any  _ of this  _ fine _?  _

She tells the voice to shut up, because she can’t deal with that right now, can’t afford to, when they are all still shaking from the adrenaline crash that comes after a fight, and she can feel blood under her fingernails from someone who’s name she will never know.

Suki is the one to break the silence. She had been running a finger over the ridges on her blood-streaked fan. But she finally looks around, and says quietly, “We should pack up and go.” She doesn’t say,  _ the less time we spend here, the better.  _ They all hear it, anyway. Toph thinks they all agree. 

Too many of the soldiers lay injured and groaning, pinned to the earth, their heartbeats faint. Too many have no heartbeat at all. 

Toph wants to scream at the unfairness of it all, wants to howl and rage and pour her fury back into the unforgiving universe, so that it might feel a fraction of her pain, that her broken, cracked family, that are still all just kids, just  _ kids,  _ have to be killers for a war of someone else’s making. Toph bites her scream down, and goes to help Katara pack up their tent. 

The six of them pack up camp in record time. Katara and Zuko don’t even have to scream at anyone once. They pack up their belongings, the ones that haven’t burned, and pile them next to Appa. Katara sweeps her arms over the pile, and enough blood to fill Katara’s big soup pot comes out. They had already wrung their things out once. Aang turns around and wretches. Toph bit her lip and swallowed her bile, snarling at the queasiness in her stomach to avoid joining him. 

They strapped their diminished belongings into the saddle with more haste than usual. Toph thought they were all desperate to be far away from here, this fresh, growing graveyard of nameless men and women. Desperate to be gone from these ghosts of their own creation. 

Before they climbed into the saddle, Toph and Aang stalled, hovering out of habit. Normally this was when they would remove the dents, the scrapes in the earth, removing the final evidence of human habitation. 

The earth in what had been their campsite had been distorted, obviously earthbent. Ice and puddles of bloody water covered most of the ground, slowly turning the once dry, cracking earth into a small marsh.The small parts of earth that lay higher than the rest, and had thus avoided liquifying, were covered in scorch marks, and ash and smoke hung thick in the air, soot covering the surface of the water like a disgusting blanket. Corpses and injured soldiers alike lay sprawled everywhere, the pungent smell of burnt flesh hooking its grip into Toph’s nose. 

There was no hiding this. No hiding that this had been a battle of many different nation’s benders. The only way to disguise the fact that it was the Avatar and his friends would be to kill all the survivors. They wouldn’t. They couldn’t. They did not even discuss it. 

They left. They didn’t bother with evasive maneuvers. Everyone always assumed they did evasive maneuvers, so in a way, _ not _ doing them  _ was  _ doing them. Totally not confusing.

They flew for hours. Normally, Toph would have clung to the side of Appa’s saddle in midair, but since her feet had left the ground, an absolutely absurd panic had taken root in her stomach, digging its roots in and stubbornly refusing to listen to logic.

She couldn’t hear their heartbeats. It was ridiculous. It was so stupid that Toph seriously thought about just smaking herself on the head until it went away. But if she did that, then Katara would ask her why she was abusing her poor head, because Katara (cared) was nosy like that. And right now, the only thing she wanted to do less than swallowing actual flames was try to put into words her baseless paranoia. 

She swallowed hard, and resisted the urge to place her feet flat on Appa’s back in an attempt to pick up some kind of pulse.  _ Stop thinking about this,  _ Toph hissed at herself.  _ Stop caring about this. It’s inane, and stupid. They’re _ fine _. There is absolutely nothing wrong with them. Stop caring about their stupid heartbeats! _

Predictably, her emotions did not even try to listen to her. Which was VERY FRUSTRATING. 

This was stupid. So incredibly stupid. They were right next to her, all five of them. 

Toph was near enough to Suki to pick out her breathing. She could hear the unmistakable swishing of Katara’s skirts as she checked over the luggage, moving back and forth. The distinct lack of frigid high-altitude air ripping away their warmth meant Aang had done his weird air-shove thing, and then taken up his usual spot between the arc of Appa’s horns, piloting. Not five feet away, two stilted voices marked Sokka and Zuko having a terse discussion under their breath. 

They were right here. Close enough to pick out the steady monotones of their breathing, the inflection of their voices, the swish of clothes on their skin. They were  _ fine.  _ Toph knew that. She  _ knew  _ that. But blood lay caked under her fingernails, and her hands were shaking, and she could hear them, but she couldn’t  _ hear  _ them. 

The pulse was gone, and it was too terrifyingly similar to not an hour before, when she had stood under smoke she could taste and a sky she couldn’t see, and a battlefield made itself known to her in all its horror not by heartbeats, but by a lack of them. It sparked flames in her she didn’t know were there, fanning terror in all its burning frost through her limbs, and her hands were shaking, and there was blood under her fingertips, and she could hear them, she could, but she couldn’t  _ hear  _ them, she didn't really know, because the heartbeats were gone, the pulse had vanished, and she didn’t know, didn’t know, because where did they go, why couldn’t she hear them,  _ where did their heartbeats go- _

A hand dropped on her shoulder, warm and strong, and another one cupped her face. “Toph,” a voice said, soft and urgent. “Toph, breathe with me. Breath with me, okay,  _ kentare _ ? Can you do that? Match my breathing.”

The hand on her shoulder shifted, uncurling Toph’s own from where it was clenched in her pants, (hands shaking, and blood drying under her fingertips, and the heartbeats were  _ gone _ ) and placed it against what Toph assumed was their chest. 

Their chest. 

It rose and fell in smooth exaggeration, meant for Toph to match. That wasn’t what she needed. Her hand was in motion before she could realize fully where it needed to go. Later, she would be embarrassed that she had  borderline groped Suki in her search, but at the moment she didn’t care. 

For the few panicked seconds her hands found nothing but chest and smooth cloth, she almost stopped breathing. And then-  _ thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump,  _ under her fingers, steady and smooth and still there, still there. She almost started crying right there. Instead, she leaned her head forward, dropping it against Suki’s shoulder, bracing both hands just under Suki’s collarbone, and matching her breathing not with Suki’s lungs but her heart. Still there. Still beating.

Suki paused. Her heartbeat shifted, so minutely that anyone but Toph would not have noticed a thing. Then she shifted, and reached up, grasping both of Toph’s wrists in her own calloused palms. 

Panic flooded her for a second, thinking Suki was going to pull them away, and she needed it, needed to hear, or she might go crazy. She didn’t. She just shifted Toph’s hands, moved them so they laid centered over the place where the pulse of Suki’s light came from. Toph pressed her hands further into Suki’s chest, her heartbeat growing clearer. Still there.

She grew vaguely aware that Zuko and Sokka’s conversation had stopped. They were staring at her, she was sure, leaned against the Kyoshi warrior with both hands braced over her chest, searching, listening to a song that she hadn’t realized how much she depended on until it was gone.

When her lungs rose and fell with the steady thrum under her hands, Toph said, “You all don’t have to stare at me like I’ve turned into a platypusmoose. You aren’t subtle. Just because I can’t see it doesn’t mean I can’t feel it,” as loudly as she could shove it past the colliding fault lines in her chest and the mountains growing inch by inch up her throat.

Toph honed in on the steady metronome beneath her fingers, but she wasn’t so tuned out from the rest of the world that she couldn’t hear the  _ swish-swish  _ or smell the other girl before she arrived. Katara could pull enough blood and water to fill oceans from clothes, but she couldn’t pull out smoke. Katara sat down next to her, her legs brushing Toph’s as she curled up in that way that made Sokka compare her to a snow leopard-caribou. 

“We know,” Katara said softly. “You are way too smart not to.” She shifted, her still-cool fingers brushing against the back of Toph’s hand before gripping her wrist. “Sometimes,” she said, peeling Toph’s hand away from Suki’s chest, and flipping it around, “I think you see more than all the rest of us.” 

She curled Toph’s hand around her wrist, and moved Toph’s thumb so that it lay centered over the inside of her wrist, in a motion she had seen Katara mirror with Sokka, curled around the fire. She pressed down lightly on Toph’s thumb, and then Toph registered the faint shift of something beneath it. The faint shift of  _ two  _ somethings, actually. 

_ Katara had told her she needed to know first aid shortly after their first fight together. Aang had gotten a cut, and Toph had panicked. She didn’t know what to do. Katara had fixed it, because Toph wasn’t convinced Katara couldn’t fix anything, a theory that would later be supported by the continued existence of both Aang and Zuko, but she wasn’t about to tell Katara that.  _

_ The waterbender had watched her for a long time that night, and the next, and on the third night, when Toph had fully planned on punching her in the face if she didn’t stop, she had pulled Toph aside and said, “Hey. I noticed you were kind of panicking when Aang got that cut the other day.” _

_ Toph had bristled indignantly. “I never panic,” she had lied through her teeth. _

_ Katara had brushed some dirt off her shoulder, and Toph wondered why it felt so different from when her mother did it. It didn’t feel… _

_ “Well,” Katara said in a tone of voice that said,  _ you’re a liar but I’m not going to call you on it,  _ “I still think I should teach you some first aid. You need to know how to take care of yourself if you get hurt.” Her voice had wobbled just a little when she said, “I might not always be there to help right away.” _

_ Toph had learned how to bandage wounds, how to cauterize them, how to make a splint for various bones, and, for last case scenarios only, how to make a tourniquet. Katara had stressed the last case only part on this, because if there was not enough blood flow to an area for an extended amount of time, the flesh could die altogether, and she would rather not take the chance of not being able to fix it. _

_ Katara taught her, and by proxy Aang and Sokka, who, after listening to a little of Katara’s words, realized they didn’t actually know about all this, so for a week when they got up in the morning, Katara taught when Sokka had lovingly dubbed ‘ _ Don’t Get Yourself Dead Class _ ’.  _

_ She taught them the danger of infections, how to clean wounds when they were deep, when they weren’t deep, what to do if you had a torso injury, which were usually far more dangerous than injuries anywhere else but the head. When Toph had complained that she didn’t need to know how to get out infections, Katara had looked up from where she was teaching them how to grind certain leaves into a salve, and in swift retribution, narrated a rather vivid story in which a man from the Southern Water Tribe died after a battle from a spear wound. The infection had gotten in deep, and he died slowly, painfully, as the flesh in first his chest and then the rest of his body had died of infection, and by the time his heart finally stopped, he had rotted from the inside out. Katara called it necrosis, explaining that it meant dead flesh, and that when you had necrosis your rotting flesh could stay on your bones for months or years before finally rotting away or leaving as a result of amputation.  _

_ It had worked. All three of them had bathed religiously after that, and they all treated infection as worse than broken bones. (Toph was pretty sure Katara was beyond amused by this.) _

_ But she had also taught them how to care for others, and one part of this was checking pulse stability. Toph had complained when Katara said she had to learn this too, saying, “Sugar Queen, I already know how to check pulses. Tada!” She raised her feet and wiggled her toes at the older girl. “I can check pulses even better than you can, Miss Master Healer.” _

_ Katara’s heartbeat had jumped angrily at the taunt, but her voice was even when she spoke. “I still think you should learn, just in case. What if there’s a wood floor? Or what if, for some reason, there’s interference that means you can’t?” _

_ Toph had scowled. Mostly because she hadn’t thought of that, and though she hated to admit it, the older girl had a point. But Katara must have thought she was still disagreeing, because she said, “Just humor me, Toph,” and tugged her over to learn how to find a pulse, and analyze it.  _

_ She gave a list of pulses that were in normal range for having just finished various activities, a list of pulses that were not great, but not as bad as they could be, and an even smaller list of pulses that meant the person in question needed immediate medical attention.  _

_ She had shown them where to find a pulse. If you couldn’t hear it on the chest, you either checked the inside of the wrist, or just under the jaw. Katara had guided Toph’s hands up to her own jaw, pressing her fingers against the side of her neck. Katara’s skin was warm, and there was more resistance than Toph had expected when she pushed down. “Why is your neck fighting me?” she had asked. _

_ Katara had laughed, her throat vibrating under Toph’s fingers, and said, “The muscles there are very strong, so they don’t give very easily. Can you feel it?” _

_ Toph knew what she was talking about. She could feel it. The blood in Katara’s veins pushed at her fingers in time with the beat that rippled through the soles of her feet. It was strange. To actually feel it. And it felt weirdly… personal. Hearing someone’s heartbeat was one thing. Feeling it sing under your fingertips was another. There was something exposing in the absolute trust of Katara’s hands pushing Toph’s own into such a small place that her life depended on so badly. Toph knew enough now to know that if this particular spot just under where her’s and Katara’s hands rested got injured, it would be very, very bad. Why did Katara trust her like this? Why was she teaching her these things, things about the body that could so easily be used to hurt instead of help? Why was she trusting her with the singing under her fingertips that was so strangely invincible and delicate at the same time?  _

_ Katara had them practice on each other, too. Toph found the pulse in the crook of Aang and Sokka’s jaws, and they found hers. When Sokka’s fingers, warm and calloused, and Aang’s fingers, small and careful, pressed into her neck, looking for proof of life, she felt exposed, vulnerable in a way she had never, ever felt before. It was terrifying and exhilarating, making her drunk with a reckless surge of trust. She felt exposed, too, when she felt their pulses.  _

_ Why did they trust her so much? Why were they showing her the places where their bodies made them weak, and fragile, and so dizzyingly breakable? Why did she feel so horribly transparent when they did, like they could see all the faultlines and the slip ups, rock against rock buried in layers under her skin? Why did they let her so close? Why did she let  _ them  _ so close? And why, why... _

_ Why did this make her feel so much closer to them, to these people she barely knew, than she had ever felt to her parents? _

_ Katara told them something else, too. “You can’t ever take a pulse with your thumb,” she had said, and this was apparently one of the few things Sokka did know, because he nodded. _

_ “Why?” Aang had asked. _

_ “Because your pulse runs through your thumb, too. So if you try to take someone else’s pulse, and you’re panicking, you might just hear your own. Which is really not what you want if that person has no heartbeat at all.” _

_ “Wait a minute,” Aang had protested. “I’ve seen you take Sokka’s pulse all the time with your thumb.” _

_ Sokka and Katara had traded knowing glances, their bodies thrumming with amusement. “Oh,” Katara said with a soft laugh, her smile curling at the corners of her words, “That’s not what that’s for. I’m not technically taking his pulse, then.” _

_ Toph could feel Aang’s face crease in a frown. “Then what is it for?” _

_ Sokka and Katara had had one of their silent conversations then, their own language flitting between them in twitches and gestures and what she assumes is facial expressions. Toph couldn’t understand how they did it, but they did. Sokka shifted in a conclusive way, meaning their wordless conversation had drawn to a close, and said, “It’s more of an inside thing between the two of us, really. It’s like, pulse against pulse. Just a little thing that’s like,  _ Hey, you’re not alone, I’m here with you _. We’ve done it since we were kids.” _

_ Toph and Aang digested that for a few seconds. Actually, Aang digested it. Toph sat in a kind of nameless shock, numb and a little disbelieving. She had grown up loving with silence, and empty rooms, and distance. To have a silent way to say, Hey, I’m here for you, With you, You don’t have to do it alone, was so alien, so foriegn, so… bitterly beautiful. It was nothing like anything she knew, and without fully knowing why, she was horribly, viciously jealous. _

_ She had never forgotten it though. Pulse against pulse. _

Pulse against pulse. Katara’s blood thrummed under her thumb, and Toph couldn’t shake the feeling that this was more than Katara just copying what she did with Sokka. That Katara knew what her panic was for. That Katara knew enough, cared enough, to put the dots together.

(She was copying what she did with Sokka. She cared about Toph, in a way close enough to what she felt for her own brother, that she was using an inside joke as old as her own memory with Toph. Toph loved with silences, and empty rooms, and distance. There is no distance between them, not with this gesture, this silent declaration of love, pulse on pulse, life on life, where neither of them is totally sure whose heartbeat is whose. And Toph wants to scream, because the distance is gone, and the rooms are filling up inch by inch as her fault lines scrape and shove and shift under this pressure, this love she doesn’t know where to put, and the silence is stifling her. She wants it gone. 

It doesn’t occur to her until much later how telling all of this is. How much it says about her. About who she was. About who she has become, hand-in-hand with these people that give her endless trust she doesn’t feel like she has earned.)

Katara and Suki don’t move. Toph sits between them, one hand on Suki’s chest, the other curled around Katara’s wrist, and their heartbeats are wonderfully, beautifully dissonant. She feels their heartbeats, and she listens to their breathing, and she doesn’t move for a long time.

Sokka and Zuko started talking again, which meant they must have thought she was in good hands. Silently, she agreed with them. 

Suki and Katara smell like smoke, and blood, and dirt. They smell like battles and death, burnt flesh and innocence drowned under rivers of liquid they spill from people they don’t know. They smell like war, and they smell awful, and Toph wants to scream, to banish the silence, to challenge whoever left this burden on their shoulders. They are too young to be soldiers, and Toph hates it with all the fire in her veins. 

They smell disgusting, and if Toph cared more about that, she would move away, because they really do smell horrendous. 

She doesn’t. She sits with one hand on Suki’s chest, and the other curled around Katara’s wrist, and with every pump of the blood in their veins, she tells herself that the blood under her fingernails is worth it. She believes herself. 

“Hey,” she said quietly. She felt Suki and Katara look at her.

“You guys need a bath. You stink. We’re talking Appa’s poop-piles stinky. Majorly gross. I’m not exactly Miss Cleanliness, either, but seriously. A bath. Lots and lots of soap, especially in your armpits. Think about it.”

Suki and Katara stared at her. Then started laughing so hard they could barely breathe. 

When Suki finally recovered, she nudged Toph’s shoulder and said, “You’re not exactly a bed of roses either, Miss Master Earthbender,” her voice dripping with amusement.

Sokka leaned over, his breathing coming into earshot. “Hey,” he said with a grin in his intonation. “What are you all cackling about?”

Katara snorted, and Toph felt her shift, probably reaching for her brother’s hand. Toph had noticed the nervous habit once, and she hadn’t forgotten it. 

“Toph is being a hypocrite.”

“I speak only the truth, Sugar Queen.”

“You’ve committed fraud.”

“For a good purpose.”

“It’s still fraud.”

“You’re no fun.”

“Okay,” Sokka said, “Not that this isn’t entertaining-” Toph heard a noise that sounded suspiciously like Katara had smacked him, and he let out an indignant yelp before continuing, “but I still don’t know what’s going on.”

Suki shifted a little and said, “Toph says we stink.”

Sokka fell silent. “ _ Well…”  _

The distinct noises of both Suki and Katara smacking him, paired with his shrieks of, “Abuse! Abuse! I’m being abused!” left Toph struggling to hold in her snickers.

She curled her fingers around Katara’s wrist, and felt the pulse under her other hand on Suki’s chest, and she let herself breathe. 

Their heartbeats had a faint dissonance in tempo, and the uneven metronome curled in her chest, soft and stubborn and still going. Still beating. Still there. 

It felt like cathedrals full of noise, and wind through reeds, and the warmth of sunlight spreading silently over her face. The plates of earth under her skin scraped and hummed and kept pushing, up and up and up. She doesn’t know what she will look like when all is said and done, when the dust has settled, and one way or another, history will remember their names. Her father had told her once,  _ Fame or infamy, either is better that being lost to the winds of time when you are no more.  _ She isn’t sure about that. Not anymore. 

(Aang had told her once, in a voice too old for his years and already wiser than her father’s,  _ Our actions carry weight. All of them. Every act of cruelty and kindness affects the world and the people in it. We change the world by how we change others. One day we will all be forgotten, but what matters is what we leave behind.  _ She likes this saying a lot better.)

They flew for hours. They were all too jumpy to settle anywhere but a defensible location. Zuko and Sokka never moved from where they sat, except to occasionally trade out with Aang, who had been steering since they left. When Sokka first took Aang’s place, the airbender walked back on shaking legs and curled into Katara’s other side without a word. Zuko shifted to sit by Suki. Toph’s hand slid from Suki’s chest to her wrist, pulse on pulse in each hand. 

The five of them sat in silence, smelling like smoke and blood and war, and they didn’t move. They didn’t move as the night began to turn gray, or when the first rays of sun hit Toph’s face, spreading warmth inch by inch over her. They didn’t move until Zuko, who had switched out with Sokka about an hour earlier, began to steer Appa into a steep dive. 

They didn’t move until Appa veered up, and landed on the ground with a concussive  _ thud  _ that sent several unknown birds shrieking up out of the trees, terrified.

Katara gently pulled her towards the edge of the saddle then, but she didn’t pull her wrist away until Toph’s feet hit the ground. Toph stamped down the tightness behind her eyes, and ignored the fact that she still couldn’t believe that they all cared so much as to do not several huge things, but a thousand tiny things like that. Swallowed down the part of her that knew her parents never would have watched enough to know that was something she needed. 

The world came into focus as soon as the pads of her feet brushed the earth, and the first thing she did was scan the area for threats. The second thing she did was hone in on her friends’ heartbeats. Suki slid from the saddle with her catlike grace, and when she hit the ground on her rolling feet, her being came into focus. Toph tried to control her sigh of relief when all her friends’ feet were safely on the ground, and she could see them all in perfect clarity again. 

“Why did we stop here?” Suki asked.

Zuko shifted and pointed to his left. Toph shifted her attention, and scanned the place his finger picked out. A deep recess in the earth led to the beginning of a vast cave system. “We need to sleep,” he said bluntly, “and if we go in there, Toph and Aang can seal it off from the inside so we don’t have to worry about…” About something like what had happened, was it only five or six hours ago? It felt like both an eternity longer than that, and only seconds. Toph clenched her hands into fists, and very stubbornly  _ didn’t  _ think about the crunch of bones under rock.

“And,” Zuko continued, “I saw a lake not too far from here, so before we leave we can clean up.” He paused awkwardly, as if unsure what to do now.

“That sounds great,” Katara said soothingly, “Good job picking this spot out.” Toph idly wondered who she was trying to soothe, the rest of the group, or her own frayed nerves.

Zuko, despite his exhaustion, perked and brightened under the compliment. It was a habit all too common for him, and Toph didn’t want to know why he always reacted like he had never gotten praise before. Secretly, she thought she knew, and just didn’t want to face it.

Katara and Zuko had spoken in unison, and when Katara and Zuko spoke in unison, the rest of their group followed. It was the unspoken rules of their little group. Or maybe not  _ rules _ , per-se, but it was just how they did things. 

In battle, Sokka was the leader, without question. The rest of them were great in battle, smart, and effective, quick on their feet. But they just couldn’t match Sokka’s borderline crazy genius. When they weren’t in battle though, Katara and Zuko were the de-facto leaders of their little group. 

For a long time it had just been Katara. Before Zuko had joined up with them, Katara pretty much had to wrangle their group alone. None of them liked to think about the brief stint in their history when Zuko had been with them, but Katara still hated him. He had deferred to her in almost every scenario, but sometimes Toph had still caught him biting down words just before they got out. 

(And probably narrowly avoiding a beat-down. Toph loved Zuko, she did, but if push came to shove, Toph’s bet would be on Katara in a fight any day.) 

When Zuko and Katara had made amends though, they had become an inseparable team seemingly overnight.

They filed into the cave, exhaustion dripping in their movements. Even Appa didn’t groan too much about being underground. Toph thought they might be too tired to complain. She also thought that maybe the idea of being surrounded by earth, tucked away and nearly impossible to attack, was as appealing to them as it was to her right then.

Zuko pulled out some firewood and began assembling a hasty pyramid in the center of the first opening. Toph waited until all of them were inside, and then shifted, closing off the cave entrance behind her. 

“Hey!” Sokka complained. “Just because you don’t need light doesn’t mean we don’t!” 

“It’s okay,” Aang said softly. “I’ve got this.” Toph heard the slight telltale  _ whoosh  _ of firebending. She realized it was the first time she had heard him speak since the attack. 

It had been almost as jarring for Toph, a sheltered noble child, to plunge headfirst into the world of battles unscheduled, and endless bloodshed. But Aang came from a world without war, and was a pacifist on top of it. And, hoooo, boy, that was going to be its own can of worms when the time came to fight the Firelord. But Toph didn’t have the energy to think about that right now. 

Diving straight from a world of relative harmony into one of unrestrained violence had taken its tolls, and Toph was secretly, selfishly, very, very glad she wasn’t Aang. 

She liked thinking about the responses of the others even less though. 

Because it made a little piece of her shrivel up and die inside every time Sokka and Zuko came at the world with the already formed idea that given the chance, people would always be cruel and vicious and incite unnecessary violence. 

It made her chest ache with a biting cold bitterness every time Katara and Suki were ready to fight, every time they read the tiny tells of distrust and anger and betrayal on strangers and “friends” alike, fans drawn and water already crackling with frost before any of the others even knew something was wrong. It made her ache that they were never, ever wrong. 

War had taken its tolls on them, too, and it had had time to dig into their cracks in a way it hadn’t with Toph and Aang yet. 

She shifted, jarred from her thoughts by a second  _ whoosh,  _ and she knew Zuko had the fire going. Suki had pulled all of their sleeping bags down from Appa’s saddle, and dumped them in a pile next to Sokka. 

One by one, they all trailed over to claim their respective sleeping bags, and began to fan out around the fire in their usual positions. Something scraped at her gut, and a tightness began to take hold in her throat. She shoved it down and moved towards the dwindling pile of sleeping bags, forcing her limbs to move through their stiffness in a normal range of motion. But Katara stilled across from her, and Toph could feel the waterbender’s eyes snag on her, suspicious and far too intelligent for her own good, so she wasn’t sure she had really done a good job.

She expected Katara to say something. Katara had never been good at letting them suffer in silence, swallow their pain until they could pretend it wasn’t there. She dragged it out with claws and fangs and ignored their kicking and screaming, and when it was out and the wound was raw, and they laid their souls bare for her because there was something about her that made you think she could fix anything, Katara did what Katara was best at. She healed. 

( _ Infection is dangerous,  _ Katara had told them,  _ but if you take care of the injury right away, it is never even a problem. It is only when you let it sit, and gather sickness, that it becomes an issue. Infection is so dangerous because it spreads, and it spreads, and it spreads, and sometimes, you never catch it until it’s too late. But if you take care of the wound right when it happens, it never has the chance to spread.  _ She had looked at them, and her body was still in a way that it only ever was when she wanted you to really pay attention.  _ If you take care of it from the start,  _ she had said,  _ it will never have a chance to hurt you like that.  _

Katara is in a bad habit of saying things that mean more than they appear at first glance. She is in a bad habit of being right every single time.)

But Katara said nothing like what Toph expected. She cleared her throat and said loudly, “Hey, guys. We don’t have to use tents in here. And it’s still summer. Which is winter for us. For me and Sokka.”

Suki stopped arranging her sleeping bag and turned towards Katara. “Why are you bringing this up?” 

Toph’s heart started beating so loud she thought maybe even Zuko with his damaged hearing could pick it out. Was Katara saying what Toph thought she was saying? Did she mean…? 

Katara shrugged nonchalantly. “It’s not hard to tell we’re all still kind of on edge. And it’s still technically  _ Hue Weamen Tewakel.  _ It wouldn’t be inappropriate at all for us to sleep together.”

Toph thought she might take off and join up with the atmosphere from the sheer elation filling her up. But she couldn’t help saying, “Hopefully not the kind of sleeping together Sokka and Suki do, though.”

Aang gasped. Zuko groaned. Sokka made a noise like a choking piggoose, and Suki’s body flushed with signs of embarrassment.

Katara’s heart rate jumped and her body gave a series of reactions that Toph was pretty sure meant she was currently trying not to die of secondhand embarrassment. 

“Okay,” she said, her voice a mixture of disgust and annoyance. “First off, Toph, I really don’t need you bringing up the topic of my brother having sex with our friend, thanks  _ so _ much for  _ that  _ image. Second, that’s not what I meant and you know it. Third, do you want in, or not?”

She did. She very, very desperately wanted in. She wanted so badly to be close to these people who she loved more than anyone she had ever loved before. She wanted, no,  _ needed  _ it, and Katara knew that somehow, before even she knew. 

She had read Toph’s need in the tiny signals, and she had offered, because she cared that much. Toph knew, deep down, that  _ Hue Weamen Tewakel  _ was just a lucky coincidence. If Katara hadn’t had that excuse, she would have found another one. It scared Toph sometimes, how easily Katara could see past her carefully crafted masks, how easily she could find what was wrong. It scared her that Katara had so easily seen her, how recklessly she loved her. It scared Toph that she loved her, too, like fuel on fire. 

“Well of course,” Toph said. “How else would I get my fill of smoke stench?” 

It was easier like that. Easier to joke and deflect and hide behind her masks like iron shields, protecting herself with façades of indifference. Katara could see past her masks. She knew the relief settling in Toph’s bones like weightlessness. 

If Toph knew how to tell her, if she knew how to bridge the distance that was all she had ever known, she would tell her how much it meant, that she cares so much. That she was used to aching all the way down, and Katara didn’t let aches sit. That this love Katara gave, selfless and endless, sent avalanches down the mountains of experience that sat in her spine, that is moved continents buried under her skin, pulling and pushing and  _ making  _ in a way that is so different from the erosion she was given her whole life. That she loves her, loves all of them, in a way that would move mountains.

But Toph loved with silences, and empty rooms, and distance, and for all she can move earth like it was an extension of her limbs, she had never been good at making bridges. It didn’t matter. Katara was such a good swimmer. 

She jokes. Katara hears what she doesn’t say. She pushes back Toph’s bangs, and drops a kiss on her hairline, and lays down her own sleeping bag right next to Toph’s.

Aang drops next to them, and then Sokka, and then Suki (both of whom are still very embarrassed). Aang and Sokka wheedle Zuko into joining them, because Zuko still acts like he is waiting for them to change their minds about him (they won’t), but Toph knows he was always going to end up sleeping next to them, one way or another. Zuko loves in a way more alike to hers than to the others’, but he loves them like burning, and he would never turn them away.

They lie down close to each other, and pretend not to see the others when they shift closer. Soon they were close enough to hear each other’s breathing. They kept going. Toph placed her feet against the ground, and watched the distance between them disappear. She let it. 

She got into a lazy pokefight with Aang and Zuko. Suki and Katara assaulted each other with tickles. Sokka complained about Momo sitting on his face. She breathes, and she breathes, and she places her feet on the ground and sinks into the heartbeats that fill the cave, resonating in her bones and filling her with noise. 

They fall asleep there, and wake up one by one several hours later, tangled up in each other. 

She never tells Katara thank you. She thinks Katara hears it though. 

Toph wonders how this happened. How she got this. This family she doesn’t feel she deserves. 

She doesn’t know. But she is grateful.

\----

Three days later found them an hour outside of a Fire Nation town called Juan Hyemina. 

Toph struggled to hold in her laughter. Aang struggled to hold in his terror. Toph was pretty sure Zuko was struggling to hold in flames trying to shoot out his nose.

Somewhere, Katara was murmuring,  _ Tui and La, what have I done to deserve this punishment?  _ Sokka was making no attempt to contain his raucous cackles. 

“ _ How, _ ” Zuko said. “We left you alone for ten minutes. Ten. Minutes. That is  _ barely  _ enough time to have a decent meal. And in ten minutes. You attracted the attention of a Fire Nation guard, let loose a herd of feral ostrichhorses, smashed into the cellars of a renowned winery, caused a flood of wine as high as a person to rush through to streets, engaged in a battle with a Fire Nation guard group, and directly ruined the cart of a cabbage salesman in the main market halfway across town.  _ How. _ ”

Toph really thinks that sometimes Zuko sorely wishes he hadn’t joined their group, if only because he wasn’t prepared to be the de-facto leader of children who still behave as such, with his only real help being Katara.

“At least I didn’t get caught?” Aang said hesitantly. 

“Aang,” Suki laughed, “You did get caught. That’s why you did all that. You got caught by a guard.”

Aang just watched them, frozen like a jackalope staring down a wolf. He was still dripping wine that Toph could smell from where she was sitting, and she was pretty sure he was covered in cabbage, too. 

“Well, you know,” Sokka managed through his heavy breathing, “at least what happened in Hau Lingja didn’t happen again.”

All of them suppressed a shudder. What had happened in the town aptly named Red River would die with them.

Katara sat up from where she lay slumped in the dirt, her face in her folded arms, and shoved a finger at her brother, her eyes narrowing. “We agreed to  _ never  _ speak of that again,” she hissed. 

Sokka paled, putting his hands up in surrender. 

A genius idea struck Toph, and before her (admittedly very limited) impulse control could stop her, she said, “But was Hau Lingja  _ really  _ as bad as Openaiv? I mean, what we did there was wacko.” Because she likes to stir the pot.

The group dissolved into loud arguments, yelling and shouting and pointing and laughing at each other.

Toph gave herself a smug pat on the back. She listened to their heartbeats, loud and steady more like home than any house had ever been. She loved it.

She jumped into the argument, and didn’t even try to hold in her smile.

\----

Sozin’s comet arrives. Aang is gone. Katara and Zuko are facing Azula. Suki is who knows where. 

It almost isn’t enough. All that they are, all that they have become. It almost isn’t enough, because they are all still just kids, fighting the latest in a series of losing battles that aren’t their fault. They are just kids, and it shouldn’t be theirs to fix, but who else could? Who else would?

So they had said their goodbyes, and scattered to the winds, because if they were fighting a losing battle anyway, by the spirits they were going to fight. With everything in their hearts, in their souls. With sweat and blood and tears, with fangs and claws and their own determination. With every beat of their hearts.

It almost isn’t enough. 

Toph dangles in space, nothing between herself and death but Sokka’s determination, and miles and miles of air.

She clings to Sokka’s fingers. His fingers are sweaty, and her fingers are sweaty, and dirt becomes paste between them as she slips, centimeter by centimeter away from him. He can’t hold her up. They don’t have the strength. They don’t have the time. She is going to die.

She is going to die, and all she can think is that she can’t hear his heartbeat. She is going to fall, and she is going to land, and she won’t ever hear them again.

It aches. 

Tears sting her eyes, and she wants to scream, because they were so close. So close to making it. So close to having forever to tell each other all the words they couldn’t say. So close. It aches, because it was always going to end this way. With coming just close enough to taste everything that could have been. 

She is going to fall, and they won’t be there to catch her this time. She is going to die, and she can’t hear their heartbeats. She is going to die. 

Suki comes back. Suki comes back. And she catches them. The airship fleet falls at the hands of a child, at the hands of three children. Their hands are too small to hold the fate of the world. They hold it anyway.

Aang wins. 

He strips Ozai’s bending from him, and when Toph hears his heartbeat, it is weak, and fluttering, and dripping with cowardice in a way that is so different from her friends. 

She wonders how this ruined, pathetic man could ever be related to Zuko, who faced death every day and held their hands tighter and looked it in the eye with his chin held high. 

Aang strips away Ozai’s bending, and leaves behind nothing but a shell. 

Toph pours every ounce of the derision she can into her face, and in a voice dripping with disgust, tells the broken man crumpled before them, “I’d spit on you, but it would be a waste of my valuable energy, because at this point I don’t think anyone could make you more humiliated than you’ve already done yourself.” 

She pours every ounce of fury into her voice and forces it not to crack under the weight of her rage. “You aren’t worth anything anymore.” Her lips curl up into a smile that feels like a wound, festering and bleeding without end. “And you already know it. I don’t even have to do anything to show you.”

She addresses him in the language of the Earth Kingdom, a huge breach of etiquette when addressing an important figure. She wants to disrespect him. She wants to tell him,  _ This means nothing, because  _ you  _ mean nothing.  _ Instead she sneers, “Congratulations,  _ Phoenix King.  _ You have an empty title, an empire ruined before it began, and no fire left in you at all. Are you happy?”

He screams at her. There aren’t even words, just a howl of senseless rage. He lunges at her. 

Toph is ready. She is fast. 

Suki is faster. She seizes the Phoenix King by his scorched hair, and flips him over her shoulder with all the rage of years of senseless battle. 

Toph doesn’t know what Suki thinks of in that moment. What grievances she pours into her strike, who she mourns and who she rages for. But Toph is not naive enough to believe that this is anything but furious retribution mixed with the screaming urge to  _ protect, protect, protect,  _ that lives in all of them.

Toph hears the Phoenix King’s arm break with an awful crunching  _ snap _ . He screams again. This time, it is a scream of agony, guttural and viciously satisfying to Toph’s ears. 

It occurs to her that Ozai probably has never felt anything like this. No one would have gotten close enough to him without getting their face melted off, and anyone who he allowed to spar with him would never have dared to do anything like this, with such intentional attempt at serious injury. But Ozai’s fire is ash in his veins, and Suki has been fighting for as long as she has existed. 

He is nothing compared to Suki now. She could kill him effortlessly. But Aang has made his choice, and they will respect it. The Phoenix King will die alone in a cell, knowing he lost to children. Toph thinks this will end up being a far worse punishment. 

They chain Ozai, and Toph wraps him in metal, cocooning him to the side of the airship to fly back. Chained, and fireless, there is not much he could do to them. But they are too on edge, too war-stricken and traumatized to even consider anything else. Suki gags him with the dirtiest cloth they can find. 

“I think it’s for wiping butts,” Suki tells her loudly. “I found it in a toilet.”

Ozai gags. Sokka howls. Aang’s shoulders shake with laughter, and Toph knows he is grinning. He may be against murder, but he has no issues with them getting a little retribution. 

The ride back to Caldera City is tense. They all end up sitting together in the pilot area (Toph has no clue what the official term for it is), and Toph metalbends a barrier around them, because none of them feel safe. Toph wonders if they will ever feel safe again. Then she almost cries with ecstasy, because she will get to find out. 

Caldera City is on fire. Suki tells her as much, her voice tight with barely suppressed fear. Sokka and Aang say nothing. Their heartbeats ripple, fast and terrified, through the soles of her feet.

Toph has never believed in the power of spirits. She believes in them, sure. But she doesn’t believe they are all powerful, or that they dictate the rules of the world, or that they influence fate any more than anything else. Toph doesn’t believe in the power of spirits. She doesn’t believe in gods. 

Caldera City is on fire. 

Toph doesn’t believe in spirits, or gods. She doesn’t think anything listens to them, when they call questions to the universe to never get an answer.

Caldera City is on fire. Toph prays.

When they land, and the earth comes into focus below her, she cries. Two more heartbeats join the tempo pounding through her feet, and she is home. 

The four of them rush off the airship as fast as they can with Sokka’s broken leg and Toph dragging Ozai by his metal chains. She encases Ozai in stone as soon as they are off the airship, and then she takes off. 

Katara and Zuko are leaning on each other, and that doesn’t change when she hits them hard enough to make them both stagger. Katara gasps a “Careful!” but Zuko just laughs, breathlessly and with enough relief to fill her up with warmth. They wrap themselves around her, smelling like smoke and blood and war, and their heartbeats ripple through her, resonating in her bones and filling her with noise.

At some point, Katara peels away from Toph as gently as she can, and runs to Sokka as fast as her legs can carry her. They don’t untangle from each other for a long time.

Somehow or another, they end up kneeling in ash and soot and dust and bloody streaks on the ground, arms wrapped around each other, all six of them curled into each other. Appa looms over them, and Momo curls around Aang’s shoulders. They smell like smoke, and blood, and war, and they are children. They have won, and they are children, and they have  _ won.  _ They all hug each other, tangled up in all of the others, shoulder to shoulder, head to head, breathless laugh to breathless laugh. All of them are crying, grief and relief and hopeful hopelessness mixed into one, and none of them are ashamed. 

It almost wasn’t enough. But it was.

\----

Toph had been to small parties. They were formal, and delicate, and Toph wore fancy dresses and makeup and she ate a certain way and never, ever talked unless specifically spoken to. 

The party at the tea shop was small. It was nothing like the parties Toph knew.

They had all returned from various meetings. They kicked off their shoes when they walked in. Those who were feeling more generous kicked them off towards the rug by the door. Those who were feeling more mischievous kicked their shoes off into their own hands, and threw them at the nearest victim. (Sokka got hit with a lot of shoes.)

Toph wore a dress that was nice, but it was made of a tough, sturdy fabric that felt pleasing under her fingers. She did not wear makeup at all, and her bun had been hastily pulled up. Strands flew loose, and hung down, and not a single one of them cared.

They cooked together in the kitchen, wearing aprons and mixing with their fingers, slopping ingredients all the way up to their elbows and throwing them at each other when it struck their fancy. 

Toph was pretty sure Katara and Suki were the only ones who got any real cooking done. The rest of them were having far too much fun with their impromptu food fight.

They ended up with a strange mix of foods from all the nations. Toph spilled jambalaya down her front at dinner when she flung her arms out in exaggeration, accidentally knocking her bowl over. Aang sprayed tea out his nose, and Katara choked on her spicy noodles. Sokka leaned over and swiped a huge fingerful straight off her dress, popping it in his mouth. Katara and Suki groaned in tandem. Aang and Mai started laughing so hard they had to lean on each other so they didn’t fall over.

Toph was loud, and disruptive, and unladylike. None of them scolded her. They were all too busy being just as loud, and disruptive, and unladylike. 

Sokka, Katara, Zuko, and Aang got into a dart throwing contest. Mai got banned from said dart throwing contest, after getting thirty bull’s eyes in two minutes. She chose to referee instead.

Toph and Suki got into a very heated Pai Sho match. Iroh tried to be an impartial referee, but ended up just coaching both of them through the game. Which made things both better and worse, because they no longer sucked so badly at Pai Sho, but were suddenly much more competitive.

Toph threw curse words, and laughed so loud she thought her chest might burst, and she reveled in the ecstasy of having forever.

She sunk into the heartbeats of the people she called home. 

She laughed, and gave Katara a shit-eating grin, and challenged her to a game of Pai Sho. She reveled in the fact that she already knew Katara’s answer.

\----

The first few months after they win (they win, they win, they  _ win _ ) are some of the most stressful of Toph’s life. Of any of their lives, really.

Zuko is desperately doing damage control as the new Fire Lord. Diplomats pour in from all over, to end the war, to gain financial compensation for both real and exaggerated slights. Aang is sucked into every meeting when his presence is necessary and too many where it is not. Katara and Sokka are quickly elected as representatives for the Southern Water Tribe, and begin arguing in every meeting with slimy diplomats and politicians who want more than they deserve. Suki became an official guard of the Fire Lord. The Kyoshi Warriors were elected and promoted all in one to Zuko’s personal guard. And Toph became Zuko’s official lie detector. Well, kind of. 

Both of them had agreed that no one should be able to know she could actually tell the difference between truth and falsehoods, so she had an official title that went on papers that had nothing to do with what she was actually there for. She didn’t even know what it was. Something about ‘Consultant to the Fire Lord, Blah, Blah, Blah’. It kind of meant nothing, really. Toph and Zuko went through the extensive staff list one by one, firing the cabinet members, the council faculty, and the palace staff who were loyal to Ozai. 

The number of cabinet members and council faculty left after they were done was dismal, but it was better than either of them had hoped. Most of the younger faculty members and quite a few delegates from the colonies, along with a scattered handful that hailed from the homeland, all believed that Ozai either was insane, had gone too far, or deserved to be dethroned and replaced. That was more than enough for Zuko to keep them around. 

Surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the staff stuck around. Apparently, when the royal family abuses or treats you as inferior while also holding their power to ruin your life over your head, you end up not liking them pretty fast. A good eighty percent of the staff was more than happy to have a new Fire Lord. The few staff members they did have to fire had been heavily indoctrinated in the superiority of Fire Lord Ozai (well,  _ more  _ heavily indoctrinated) and thought Zuko was a traitor. Some of them said as much, but others kept to cloyingly sweet words that Toph could see through in an instant. Zuko fired all of them.

He then embarked on a taxing journey to try to hire enough staff and faculty members to replace the ones they had lost. It took forever, because they didn’t just need replacements, they needed replacements that wouldn’t stab Zuko in the back at the first chance they got. It was… difficult, to say the least.

But Toph kind of loved the new head of the education department, Shao-Xi. She was kind of super awesome.

And there were meetings. All. The. Time. 

Meetings about ending the war, meetings about withdrawing the Fire Nation troops from the other nations’ newly restored territory, meetings about financial compensation for the other kingdoms, meetings about ruined infrastructure and collapsed economies, meetings with diplomats, meeting without diplomats, meetings that were disguised as parties but weren’t fooling anyone.

It was safe to say Toph was going a little crazy.

It was safe to say they were all going a little crazy.

Everyone wanted to meet the group that defeated Fire Lord Ozai and ended the war. The strangers would come up to them and gush through clenched teeth, with sharp words and tight smiles and a faint aura of disdain. Toph hated them. They were grateful, but they were furious. Furious that they were upstaged by a group of children, furious that in the span of one year, six  _ children  _ turned the tide of a war they had been losing for one hundred years.

Somehow, their tiny group that just wanted to help, just wanted to live, to breathe, to rest without worrying about when their bodies would fill the next graveyard, did it. They ended the war, and had plunged headfirst into cleaning the wounds left behind. And the civilians, the people that they will never meet love them for it. The people that they  _ have _ to meet hate them for it.

Toph hated them, the strangers that lied through their teeth, truth only in their bitter gratefulness.

But she does not regret any of it. Because between the chaos of rebuilding a ruined world, she was living with her friends. 

They were laying on the roofs stargazing, or laughing at the circles beneath each other's eyes, or playing continuous games of tag between the dreaded meetings. Prank wars, and food fights, and heated games of six way Pai Sho, which Suki and Toph invented when they were both  _ very  _ drunk. They would raid the kitchens, and cook over a makeshift fire pit in Zuko’s room, and Zuko would make tea, and they would fall all over each other, scraping food together and eating off each other’s plates and daring each other to combine foods and eat it. 

(Toph didn’t think her taste buds would ever fully recover from the trauma of eating the combination of Earth Kingdom jambalaya, sliced sea prunes, and fireflake noodles. But Sokka had dared her to do it. She _ had _ to.)

Sometimes, if the walls started closing in, and the attention got too much, and they felt like they couldn’t breathe through the stone, they would dig out their old tents that Sokka had hidden in his room, stubbornly refusing to get rid of when the servant said they were in need of replacement. They would pitch their tents in the inner courtyard outside Zuko’s window, and start up a fire, and Katara would cook something, and they would sleep under the open, endless sky, like they had done for so many months when they were on the run.

It was wonderful.

But all things must come to an end, and after three months had passed, Aang dropped Toph off at her parents’ home, and hugged her goodbye so tightly she thought her ribs would crack, and Appa gave her one last whole-body lick, and they left.

She stayed for a little under a month.

She couldn’t do it. Toph loved with silences, and empty rooms, and distance. Except, somewhere along the line, that had changed. Because the empty rooms were stifling, and the silences made her want to scream just to hear something, anything, and she hated the distance with everything in her. Somewhere along the line, Toph had started loving differently. 

She and her friends (her family) had torn down her walls brick by brick, and flung open the doors, and ripped away the roof, and pulled her out of the emptiness, bridging the gaps between how she  _ thought  _ she should love and how she  _ did  _ love, and their heartbeats had filled her with noise.

Toph used to love with silences, and empty rooms, and distance. She doesn’t anymore. She doesn’t know what she  _ does  _ love with, now. But it isn’t the silences and the empty distance that lives in the house she called home once.

(Though she is beginning to think that house, and the people in it, were never home. Could never be home, to her. 

She is beginning to think that maybe her friends, with their loud laughter and fierce love and echoing, bleeding heartbeats are the only home she’s ever known. 

It aches in a way that cannot be named. That her parents never loved her with anything real, with anything that actually loved  _ her. _

But she knows who did. Toph doesn’t need to send them a letter. A month is too long for silence, and they are already coming. It aches, that that is enough for her. 

It aches, that she knows now she doesn’t need her parents to be there for her, because they never really were at all. But she knows who was. Who will be. They are already coming for her.)

Aang and Katara arrive on Appa exactly twenty-eight days after Aang dropped her off. Toph knows how many days it has been. She kept count. It aches. 

Their heartbeats echo through her bones, filling her with noise. They don’t ask what happened, why she looks broken. They hold her between them, and let their warmth speak for them. They are silent, but it is a different kind of silence than the one that stifles your voice, choking the noise out of existence before it even has a chance to leave. There is no distance between them at all, with Toph sandwiched between their bodies, their arms wrapped around her.

She is going back with them. She is going home.

When they got back to the palace in the Fire Nation, Zuko was there to greet them. So was Suki and Sokka, and they ran up pushing and shoving and shouting and generally being obnoxious to any passerby. Toph loved them. 

Zuko walks up, far more composed than Suki and Sokka. When he gets to her, he leans over, his warm hands on her shoulders, and Toph knows he is looking for something in her face.

He must have found it, because he said, “We left your room for you. I didn’t let the servants touch it, but I think Katara’s tried to organize it.”

“Someone had to,” Katara protested, “And I wasn’t about to let any of the servants do it. They wouldn’t have done it like she likes it!”

“Katara,” Suki said, “She likes it best unorganized.”

“It’s not unorganized,” Sokka said, “It’s organized chaos!”

“Well, now it’s just organized,” Katara said. “But I did make sure to try to keep it in the inane organization system you use.” She bumped Toph’s shoulder teasingly. “I don’t understand how  _ Filing Junk _ ,  _ Disgusting _ ,  _ Tolerable _ , and  _ Mine _ , are effective categories of organization, but I did stick to it.”

Toph swallowed through the tightness in her throat.   
It wasn’t something her parents would ever have done for her. It wasn’t something her parents would ever have thought to notice in the first place, how she organized her things on the rare occasion she did organize them. It ached, but it was a bittersweet ache, pulsing with an undercurrent of love, love, love.

Zuko’s hand tightened on her shoulder, and she shifted her head towards him to show he had her attention. 

“Stay as long as you need,” he said quietly. “We missed you.”

We missed you. We missed  _ you _ .

Toph blinks back tears, and sinks into their heartbeats, filling her with noise. It feels like home.

She slotted back into her place like she never left, and suddenly her life was back to meetings, and slimy diplomats, and living with her friends, no, her  _ family _ , in the margins of the sprawling story they were still writing. 

They get into prank wars, and they spar like they used to, and they laugh and love and live, and Toph aches because this is home, and she is overjoyed because she is home.

She follows their heartbeats, the pulsing tempo of their life, their lives, twined in each other without end, and she loves them in the way that  _ she  _ loves them. 

She remembers the saying Suki told her, what feels like forever ago.  _ I fight not for the blood on my hands, but the blood in the veins of my loved hearts.  _

Toph loves their hearts. She loves  _ them _ . And here’s the miracle. They love her too.

The plates under her skin push, and scrape, and pull. They slip, and they crack, and they keep pushing and pushing and pushing, shoving the earth within her higher, inch by inch. They won. They have forever. Toph is going to see what it makes, this pushing beneath her skin. She is going to see what they become, together.

She laughs with her friends, and she wonders how she could have thought home would be anywhere but where they are.

She sinks into their heartbeats, resonating in her bones and filling her with noise like singing. 

Zuko finds her on the roof after the latest definitely-not-actually-a-meeting-in-disguise party. 

She was leaning back, staring up at the endless sky that she could taste and the stars she could not see. She felt him coming minutes before he actually got there. She wonders how they know her so well that he knew where she would be. She wonders how she knows them just as well as they know her.

Zuko slid down next to her, curling his legs up under him in a way that was going to leave wrinkles all over his formal robes. She didn’t think he really cared.

They didn’t say anything for a long time. They sat in the darkness, and listened to the faint sounds of music and laughter, and tasted the night air on their tongues, cool and heavy.

“Are you staying?” he asked quietly. 

Toph stared without seeing up at the stars, rolling his question over her tongue before answering.

“Maybe,” she said. “I don’t really know what I’m going to do once everything settles down more. But until it does, I want to help you all fix things.”

Toph thought about infection far too often. She thought about fixing it. She thought about fixing herself.

Zuko nodded. “Are you going to get lost again?”

Toph heard the question in his question, the one too heavy to put into words.

Coming from anyone else, she might have been offended. But it was coming from Zuko. He had been lost, too, once. Funny, that the same people helped both of them find themselves again.

Toph thought about heartbeats, about noise. She smiled up at the endless sky. 

“No,” she said. “I’ve got something to follow home.”


	2. Language Key!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Take a wild guess at what this could possibly be. I bet you're wrong. Because who could have possibly guessed it was... a language key?

Language Key

Air Nomads

Yuoe- (you-OH-ey) moon

Relame- (reh-la-mey) ( _ me  _ pronounced like in mesa) to mourn

Sai- (sigh)(said quickly, like saying  _ lie _ ) with

Relame sai Yuoe- to mourn with the moon; it is a tradition of the Air Nomads that if you have suffered a great loss, you should try to let yourself begin mourning when the moon rises and cease when the sun rises, as a way of reminding yourself that even though you need to mourn, you should not stop living, that the person/people you are mourning would want you to find peace and happiness, too.

Erave- (eh-RAH-vey) spirit, add - _ v  _ to the end to make plural, spirits ( _ Eravev).  _ The word refers to either a spirit(s) that can be named, or one that cannot. 

Uole- (oo-OH-lay) song, or expression of feelings

Eravev-Uole- prayers for the spirits; the Air Nomads give thanks and gratitude for nature, and the world that they live in, either with traditional chants or with personal ones of their own making. They can be given at any time, in any way that is not disrespectful to the spirits, but are usually given at least once a month. The chants are believed to give the spirits recognition, and that by acknowledging them, the people will be more listened to by the spirits. The other nations used to have similar practices, but they faded away over time. This has left the Air Nomads with a closer relationship to the spirits of nature than other cultures, as they acknowledge both spirits that can be named, and spirits that cannot be named, by using the collective term  _ Eravev,  _ instead of only acknowledging the major spirits with well known names (ex. Tui and La, Agni, ect.)

Quere- to share

Vidale- life

Cuolefar Heobe- (COO-oh-LAY-far A-oh-BAY)creeping lilies, a type of flower that grows by the Southern Air Temple; they cling to rocks, and bloom in the spring, and over the course of the spring, they shift from their beginning pinks to purples. Also called  _ Anefar Jurente  _ by the children of the temple

Anefar Jurente-(Anay-FAR who-REN-tay) sundrop flowers; another name for  _ Cuolefar Heobe _

Quere Vidale- (COO-eh-re vee-DAH-lay)an old tradition in which one observes another culture through someone who actively practices in a place where it is actively practiced 

Veshereh- (veh-sher-eh)soul sibling, a very powerful way of saying, ‘you are my family’. It places emphasis on emotional bonds, and a very deep feeling of love and care. 

Anefar Oanii- (Anay-FAR oh-AH-ni) sun oasis, a string of connected ledges high on the cliff above the Western Air Temple with small pools and gardens that are traditionally tended to by the children of the temple

Water Tribes   
  


Southern

Te Kavéle- (Teh Kah-VEH-leh) literally means,  _ you rot,  _ but it is also a curse word used to speak ill of someone else, meaning that they are lower than rot, or,  _ I hope that you rot _ . To add - _ ne  _ to the end is to say the curse directly to the person you are speaking with ( _ Te Kavélene). _ It is a term of utmost disrespect, and is not ever used in a joking manner.

Fecin- (feh-siin, siin sharp and short) a piece of poop, or something that no one wants to be around, even just for long enough to deal with it.

Shaimek- (SHY-meck) brother, either emotional or biological; to add - _ e  _ to the end is to place emphasis on _ little  _ brother (Shaimeke), and to add - _ a  _ to the end is to put emphasis on  _ big  _ brother (Shaimeka) (can be used as a technical term or a term of endearment)

Shaimel-(SHY-mel) sister, either emotional or biological; to add - _ e  _ to the end is to place emphasis on _ little  _ sister (Shaimele), and to add - _ a  _ to the end is to put emphasis on  _ big  _ sister (Shaimela) (can be used as a technical term or a term of endearment)

Teiekiou- (tey-EE-KEY-oo) empty head, an insult used to say basically, your brain is not there, or your brain  _ is  _ there, but you choose not to use it

Hue Weamen Tewakel- the warm night, the part of the polar winter when the sun does not rise above the horizon, and everyone stays inside and reconnects with their family

Jeunik- (Zhay-oo-nick) a type of seasoning made from seaweed that is dried and then ground into a fine powder, used in many different types of Water Tribe cuisine. There are three different kinds of seaweed used for different types of jeunik, and each is only able to be harvested for about three weeks per year.

Qanikejes- (KA-knee-KEH-zhes) pests; a word to insult people you consider friends or family without risking insult, because used as an insult, it is considered tame, with an understanding of the fact that the person using it cares about you

  
  
  


Northern

???  
  


Earth Kingdom

Yetan Gegar- a type of food, consisting of cooked meats and/or vegetables in wraps of thin crust.

Reca we, gengai- (Ray-ka WAY gen-GUY) for you, again; an expression used to say, ‘this was worth it, for you’, or ‘this was no problem’, or, literally, ‘I would do this again for you’ but is associated with feelings of fondness or care

Ue gethahew ne kow jinawel undue peones, neu kow jinawel yen ues amoren tekahanes. - I fight not for the blood on my hands, but for the blood in the veins of my loved hearts

Kentare- (ken-TAH-rey) little, used as either a descriptor or a term of endearment.

Fire Nation 

Enhaou kai- (en-HOW-OO kai) teacher, or, person more intelligent than me whom I hold in high respect; it is one of the few gender neutral honorifics in the Fire Nation language

Mhakenyik- (Ma-ken-YEEK) literally means  _ not yet big _ , a term of endearment used to imply smallness, but also great potential

Blodfrewj-(Bluth-FREW-zh) blood-traitor, betrayer

Juan Hyemina- (joo-AHN hyeh-ME-nuh) literally  _ air sugar _ , a Fire Nation town on one of the smaller islands in the archipelago

Hau Lingja- (hwah LING- zhuh) literallly  _ red river,  _ a town in the Fire Nation named for the massive rust-colored river it sits near

Openaiv- (oh-PEN-NAIV) another Fire Nation town on one of the larger islands, renowned for its impressive sea trade and extensive underground bending leagues

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm low key sorry about how long the saying Suki and Toph say is, because it felt super clunky and unweildy. But I gave it to you anyway, so make of it what you will!

**Author's Note:**

> You made it! How was it? Yea? Nay? (You don't actually have to answer that, I'm just entertaining myself in these notes.) These disaster children are a balm on my road-rash soul during Covid. For real. This is my coping strategy. Fanfic and stress baking. I hope the worldbuilding wasn't too much for you guys to follow. I actually don't think I went too overboard with it in this fic, which is a first for me! (BTW, Blodfrewj will come back, and I will go more into detail about what Toph meant when she said, "She knew what it meant for them." Because I'm evil and it's gonna hurt.) I love these children so much, you guys. We gotta give them all the love. In case you couldn't tell, I really, really love the relationship between Toph and Katara, so you probably will get more of that. I had to use Heartlines for the title, because it was just too perfect. I had so much fun making this, and I hope you liked it as much as I do! (As always, feel free to play Grammar Police with this. I appreciate any advice you can give me!) :)


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